\n The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been tracking abortion trends for decades, but this year\u2019s report \u2014 including some of the earliest federal data reflecting the effect of significant changes to abortion access nationwide \u2013 has been pushed back until spring amid turmoil at the federal agency.\n <\/p>\n
\n Each year, states and jurisdictions voluntarily report data that they\u2019ve collected to the CDC for a national analysis, a process that has been happening in some form since 1969. The CDC compiles that information into a report that\u2019s typically published in late November.\n <\/p>\n
\n The US Department of Health and Human Services blames former CDC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Debra Houry for the delay of this year\u2019s abortion surveillance report, saying in a statement that Houry \u201cdirected staff to return state-submitted abortion data rather than analyze it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Houry denies this claim, instead saying that major layoffs at HHS this year left the CDC without the staff it needed to do the work.\n <\/p>\n
\n After thousands of people were laid off<\/a> \u200bfrom HHS in April, Houry says, she helped lead a transition management team that developed agency-wide approaches to manage the effects of the layoffs, including coordinated communication. At that time, she says, the agency had also implemented a policy in which all external communication \u2014 including to partners at state and local health departments \u2014 had to be approved by a communications office led by politically appointed staff during the initial weeks after the layoffs.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe policy that was proposed by the agency to us \u2014 that we signed off on \u2014 was that there\u2019s no funding, no staff, and not statutorily required [so] the program can\u2019t do the work,\u201d she told CNN. \u201cThe politicals were all aware, back in April, that this was one of the programs that couldn\u2019t continue, along with many others.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n An HHS official told CNN that Houry did not follow this process of checking with political appointees or other agency leadership before shutting down the abortion surveillance data project, but HHS didn\u2019t respond to a request for details about how or when it heard about the supposed action by Houry.\n <\/p>\n \n Houry was one of several high-level veteran agency officials who resigned<\/a> in protest in August after CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez was fired just weeks after she had been sworn in to the position. The exiting leaders described censorship, communication failures and the weaponization of public health by HHS in resignation letters, social media posts and statements from attorneys.\n <\/p>\n \n The delayed CDC abortion surveillance report is expected to include data through 2023, the first full year after the US Supreme Court Dobbs decision that revoked the federal right to an abortion.\n <\/p>\n